Today’s column marks the end of a year-long contribution – I’ll be indeed taking a month’s break to resume again in early January. Only last week, one of my close associates at work remarked, “But why do you keep writing these diaries?” He was referring not only to this weekly column but also to the daily journal or diary that I keep – a habit I developed from an early age.

Diary-keeping is nothing new. From times immemorial man has kept one – think of the age-old “Captain’s Log”; the famous diaries of the First World War combatants; that of Anne Frank or those of the infamous Joseph Goebbels, Adolph Hitler’s propaganda minister. People like Goethe, Florence Nightingale, Sigmund Freud, Francis Bacon, Jiddu Krishnamurti and many others, were all known for keeping diaries.

Why do we do it? Probably because we believe that doing so could generate definite benefits. I can think of four major ones in my job as a manager:

● Discover who we are. Keeping a managerial diary, when practiced on a regular basis, yields powerful information as to who we truly are – why we think certain thoughts, feel certain things and behave in this or that manner. This self-awareness and the ensuing self-knowledge is of course essential to our success.

● Generate learning. It is the most powerful tool that I can think of, that can generate learning. By “stopping the clock” on a regular basis, reviewing and reflecting on what has taken place during the last few hours and writing it down in a traditional or electronic diary, we create a wonderful opportunity to learn about ourselves and others around us.

● Appreciate the moment. It is a much needed tool if we want to live in the here and the now and appreciate in full the present moment – instead of chasing after an elusive tomorrow or regretting an evaporated yesterday.

● Combat stress. By regularly pausing and writing down what’s going inside us, we take the time to think. This very break enables us to relax and perhaps, come to grips with some major reason as to why we are feeling unhappy, inadequate or unfulfilled and therefore stressed.

So what goes into the diary? The answer is simple: any significant thought, feeling or behaviour that you experience or engage into during the day. I have a simple formula: I write what took place “before” a particular incident; what I experienced “during” the incident and what I learned about myself “thereafter”. For example, if I have to reprimand a subordinate for being late, I could write something like this, “Hesitated to call in X to reprimand him. Don’t like confronting. Did so eventually and told him that his latecoming was not acceptable. Felt apprehensive as to his reaction but was surprised when he apologized. Felt relieved. Learned that I can be assertive when I want to.”

If you succeed in doing this regularly and repeatedly, much begins to emerge. After a while, you have at your disposal a rich field where many of the self-knowledge plants are growing. If from time to time, you harvest them by looking out for pattern and themes (e.g. “How come I am always worried when I have to see the boss?” “Why do I treat male differently to female employees?”), you get deeper and deeper into your personality, unearthing and discovering more who you are and why you behave in this or that manner.

Author Mark Rutherford once wrote, “True knowledge of ourselves is knowledge of our power”. C’est ce que je vous souhaite pour 2005 – as I thank you for your many emails, letters and phone calls.

<B>Prof E Charoux

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